Fitch Ratings raised South Africa’s credit rating on Friday, citing stronger fiscal discipline and lower-than-expected debt, marking its first upgrade of the country in more than two decades.<\/p>\n
The agency lifted the rating one notch to ‘BB’ from ‘BB-‘, keeping it below investment grade.<\/p>\n
“The upgrade primarily reflects South Africa’s record of prudent fiscal management and progress on fiscal consolidation, despite weak economic growth and domestic and external shocks,” the ratings agency.<\/p>\n
Africa’s largest economy has posted primary fiscal surpluses averaging about one percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) over the past four years, it said.<\/p>\n
Debt was also expected to stabilise over the next two years at around 80 percent of GDP, it added.<\/p>\n
The government welcomed the move, saying it was the first upgrade from the New York-based agency in almost 21 years.<\/p>\n
“Improved sovereign credit ratings help to lower borrowing costs for government, businesses and households and have tangible benefits for ordinary people,” Treasury director general Duncan Pieterse said in a statement.<\/p>\n
In November, South Africa secured its first major credit upgrade in over 16 years after S&P Global lifted the country’s sovereign assessment to “BB” from “BB-“.<\/p>\n
Last month, Moody’s revised its outlook on its credit rating for South Africa to positive from stable.<\/p>\n
“South Africa still has some way to go to regain its investment grade credit rating but for the first time in more than a decade we are seeing a clear turnaround in the downward ratings trend,” Pieterse said.<\/p>\n
The country’s inflation stood at four percent in April on higher fuel prices triggered by the US-Israel war against Iran, while unemployment remains above 32 percent.<\/p>\n
Additional sources \u2022 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fitch Ratings raised South Africa’s credit rating on Friday, citing stronger fiscal discipline and lower-than-expected debt, marking its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":719528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,164],"class_list":["post-719527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/719528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}